by Janie DeVos
The Revere’s captain was well-seasoned and knew a good man when he saw one. Early on, it was apparent to him that Papa was a good-natured, jovial fellow, who could be put to better use working alongside the passengers instead of being hidden away in the belly of the boat. Papa was only too glad to come up on deck. He said that “feeding that furnace in the month of August, in Florida, was near ‘bout as hot as feeding the fires of hell.” Mama scolded him for saying that, but she quieted down when Papa told her that she ought to go try it herself and then say whether or not he had a right to describe it so.
As the boat’s steward, Papa’s job was to make sure that every passenger was well taken care of and comfortable. Papa was good at his job, and every captain knew it, often trying to steal him away from whatever boat he was on at the time.
Papa took extra care with the passengers who seemed most vulnerable, like the elderly and the unescorted ladies. It was a rare thing to see a woman traveling alone, although Papa said that Yankee women did it more often than Southerners. When I asked him why that was so, he said, “Southern women are given a greater sense of modesty and decorum at birth, but Yankee gals are born with a bigger sense for adventure and bigger opinions about everything, too!” I told him it sounded to me like those northern women had more exciting lives than the southern ladies did.
The majority of travelers from the north came seeking relief from the harsh winters and to see the glories of central Florida’s crystal-clear springs. By far the most popular was Silver Springs. The water had amazing clarity so its many mysterious caverns and caves could easily be seen, even those at great depths. And from those depths came many thousands of gallons of water bubbling up each day, so the spring remained full and cool and crystal clear all the time. The water filling the springs came from underground rivers, and the sandy spring bottoms, with their green ribbons of grass, filtered the water, giving it the clarity they became so famous for.
Some of the locals were none-too-pleased with the arrival of the Yankees in late autumn, especially those who brought contagious diseases, like tuberculosis, with them. Mama said it’d be bad enough to come down with one of those sicknesses living in a big city, but at least those folks had big-city doctors and big-city hospitals to tend to them. “Here, though, there ain’t nothin’ much to keep the ailin’ goin’ other than prayer and a pinch of pity,” she complained. But fears and resentments could usually be tempered by the money the northerners readily spent.
“All right, boys.” Captain Franks turned his attention from the snagged branch in the paddlewheel back to Moses and Louis, standing at the railing outside the pilot’s house. “Y’all go ahead and jump on in, but stay outta the way while your daddy’s tryin’ to move ’er a tad. Then, when I say, y’all try dislodgin’ that piece of shit—pardon me—” He quickly nodded to the fancy northern folks who stood around the promenade deck watching with great fascination. “You stay down here and watch them boys, Hap. I’ll go up to the house,” he said, referring to the pilot house.
Captain Franks knew that if any damage occurred, there would be less explaining to do and less hell to pay if he’d been at the helm at the time. When the captain started to mount the ladder-style steps, Moses and Louis ducked beneath the railing and dove into the foreboding water with practiced ease. Even though it was noon and the land was lit by the sun’s strongest light, the rays barely penetrated the water, and with the darkness of the boys’ skin, the two disappeared below the surface as if they’d been swallowed whole by some monstrous open mouth.
They surfaced and quickly swam toward the bank, well out of the way of the paddlewheel; then Emmitt tried to back the boat up a couple of feet. A terrible grinding noise accompanied the slight movement, and the boat was immediately stilled. “A’right, you boys,” Captain Franks yelled down to them. “Give ’er a try. See if y’all can get that bastard—pardon me”—he nodded again at the northerners and turned back to the boys—“outta there. At least see if she’ll budge any with a little encouragement.”
Both boys took a deep lungful of air, then disappeared below the surface. Soon scraping and knocking sounds could be heard coming from beneath the boat. Suddenly, the branch—whose size had undoubtedly been reduced some by its interaction with the paddle wheel—popped up to the surface like a bobbing cork. The boys each grabbed an end and dogpaddled with it to the bank, where Moses dragged it up and well out of the way of any other unsuspecting vessels. The two swam back to the boat and climbed up a rope ladder that Papa dropped to them. As soon as they were back on board, my father gave the house the all clear signal, and the freed paddlewheel began to turn and churn the water into thick white foam as a resounding cheer went up from the passengers. The Jocelyn was underway once again toward her home port of Silver Springs.
Chapter 2
Bee Stings
“Only eighty-three seconds late.” Satisfied with the boat’s arrival time considering the hold up from the snag, Captain Franks snapped the cover on his gold pocket watch closed, tucked it back in his navy-blue vest pocket, then climbed down from the pilot house. As the steamboat’s engine was shut down, allowing the boat to drift the last several feet toward the dock, Moses and Louis threw lines from the bow and stern to two men on the dock, who tossed the looped ends over vertical log pilings.
At Silver Springs landing and general store, folks were always milling around to see if any work might be available, and there was a constant flow of people coming and going on the boats. Many of those arriving needed to be driven somewhere, like the town of Ocala, which was just six miles to the east, or the Silver Springs Hotel, as well as a smattering of private dwellings. And waiting for the opportunity to serve them all were local drivers in buggies and wagons of all sorts and descriptions, lined up in the shade of a stand of oak trees just to the right of the white, two-storied building that was the store. With eagle eyes, the waiting drivers scanned the new arrivals as they made their way down the docks, watching for hands to shoot up in the air, hailing a ride. Then the first driver to spot the signal shot forward in his conveyance, making a mad dash to the dock before another driver could beat him out of a fare.
Since the general store was a stop on a stagecoach line, those needing transportation to towns farther away could find a list of times and destinations on a schedule posted above the ticket window next to the front door. Mr. Carmichael Brody owned the place, but also acted as ticket agent. He’d hurriedly step up to the window and don a visor whenever a customer was in need of a ticket. Brody was tall, big and bald, but if Mother Nature had short-changed him on a full head of hair, she made up for it with a thick, bushy mustache. The man loved peanuts and ate them throughout the day, snitching them from the large barrel that sat at the end of the counter. Because of that, Mr. Brody always had bits of peanut skins stuck in his mustache, and I wondered why his wife, Adele, didn’t insist that he either shave the food-catcher off or at least run a mustache comb through it.
In big part, the flurry of activity at the landing was centered on outgoing and incoming cargo. Men off-loaded the shipments coming from the north, much of which were textiles and steel, and on-loaded cargo from our area, such as uncut logs, produce, and citrus. The freight would make the journey up the Ocklawaha, to the Welaka River, and finally the St. Johns, which would run to Jacksonville. Then the cargo was loaded onto trains from there.
Between the general store and the landing house, where the riverboats went for repair, hunters and trappers hung their freshly killed and dressed meats on racks. They were always ready to haggle over prices with anyone interested, but because they were a rough bunch, both in looks and in character, the asking price was most always paid without much negotiation. There was usually a variety of game available, as well as fish, alligator, and turtle. Some of it was fresh, but most was smoked, and though the fresh meat was by far the most desired, the smoked meats and fish lasted much longer.
There were also hides and fur
s to be purchased. Even though most of the passengers from the north had shed their heaviest coats of leather and fur once they crossed into the southern waters, there were still those who sought out the fine-quality skins. They shipped them to family back home or had them made into new winter clothing to be briefly worn in the south’s short-lived winter. Though the majority of the time it was mild in central Florida, it wasn’t uncommon for the temperature to drop well below freezing, and because the humidity was usually high, the cold could chill a body to the bone and kill vegetation overnight. It was a fear that the citrus grove owners and farmers dealt with from December through mid-February, for a deep freeze could wipe them out and turn a small Florida town into a ghost town.
Sitting on the porch in front of the general store were some of the local farmers, their wives and daughters, and widows and single women, selling live chickens, fresh eggs, and vegetables that were freshly picked, pickled, or canned. Mama and Ivy were often there. Mama always had eggs to sell, courtesy of the more than twenty-five chickens we owned by that time, as well as some of her canned goods. And Ivy brought to market honey that she harvested from the bees she’d started keeping. More sought-after than Ivy’s honey, though, were the herbs she collected and the remedies and homemade medicines she made from them. Over the years, she’d learned the art of medicine making through the wonderful tutelage of Mayoma Hailey, Moses’s and Louis’s mother, and Emmitt’s wife.
Mayoma had been born and raised in the area and had learned the skills of medicine making from her mother, who’d learned it from her mother, a full-blooded Seminole who died en route to Oklahoma during the forced march on the Trail of Tears. Mayoma’s mother, Betty McIntosh, had been given to a colored family right before the government flushed the Seminoles out of the area, but because many colored people were part of the forced march, too, a small number of families moved deeper into the woods where they’d be harder to find. It was there that Betty grew up, eventually married, and had Mayoma, who then learned the ancient knowledge and skills needed to make vital medicines, elixirs, and tonics. Once there was no longer the fear of the government rounding up any more red- or brown-skinned people, Betty and Mayoma began bringing their medicines and herbs to the general store at Silver Springs. It didn’t take long for the women’s natural remedies to become highly sought after, especially since the area couldn’t seem to keep a doctor for long, even though illnesses and injuries were as commonplace and plentiful as rat snakes in a barn.
Mayoma and Emmitt still lived in the house that they’d built eighteen years before, right after they’d gotten married. They were our closest neighbors, a mile away. Mayoma had started teaching my sister about the medicinal properties of the indigenous plants after Ivy had shown interest in an elixir the older woman had made from elderberries to help fight a hacking cough James had. We feared my brother was developing pneumonia, and I was sent to get Mayoma since Silver Springs was between doctors at the time. Within a couple of days of his taking the elderberry elixir, James’s condition had greatly improved, impressing the whole family but especially Ivy. She decided then and there that medicine making was something she wanted to learn, and we saw a passion and excitement in her the likes of which we’d never witnessed before.
Most every day, except Sunday, Ivy went to the Haileys’ home to be instructed by the patient and kind Mayoma, who accepted my sister’s newborn passion without question, and painstakingly taught her which plants would cure and which ones would kill. Then she carefully oversaw Ivy’s selection and preparation of them until she was absolutely sure her fine young student wouldn’t do someone in instead of fixing someone up. Even at the youthful age of seventeen, my sister was beginning to be regarded as a trusted medicine and herbal woman in her own right and was a regular fixture in front of the general store.
As soon as the boats docked, the steamboats’ stewards and cooks, as well as the tourists, hurried over to the various foods and medicines that were available that day, carefully examining and selecting them. Papa did the selecting for the Jocelyn, alongside the boat’s cook and Papa’s close friend, Alfonso Kite.
While Papa and Alfonso selected the foods for the return trip to Palatka, the crew on the Jocelyn busied themselves with their own jobs, including making any necessary repairs to the vessel, as well as giving it a thorough washing down. Though Papa’s job included overseeing the tidying up and changing of bed linens in all eight of the passengers’ staterooms, which held two to four bunks each and were located on the first two of the three decks, the deckhands were expected to keep their own sleeping quarters below deck neat and clean, and the task was to be completed before the new passengers arrived.
The stokers were also busy loading the boat with enough coal to generate the steam needed to get it to the next port. The last thing anyone wanted, be it passenger or employee, was to run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere on the Ocklawaha River. In the day, it was sweltering hot; at night, there were swarms of bloodthirsty mosquitoes, deerflies, and chiggers. While the crew worked quickly readying the boat for the next trip, I looked around the cabin to make sure I’d packed up everything I’d bought, including cloth for the new dresses I would make for Ivy and me, as well as the material and batting I’d splurged on for a new quilt for my parents.
I was just finishing up the last of my schooling in the small, one-room schoolhouse in Silver Springs, but, before I would be through in the spring, I wanted to use the old sewing machine that was stored away in the back of the school’s small coat closet. It was there that I could secretly work on the quilt I wanted to surprise my folks with at Christmas.
Aside from the material I’d bought, I also double-checked that I’d safely packed away a small parcel containing writing materials, envelopes, and stamps. While Ivy was honing her natural talents to become a healer, I hoped to follow a different path altogether: I wanted to become a journalist.
As often as I could, I wrote about the goings-on in the area. I supposed they might seem quite ordinary to some folks, but I hoped that those living in cities or larger towns might find my stories about life in the wilds of Florida interesting. Compared to other places, especially northern cities, the state was sparsely populated, and I realized that I was writing about a subject that few people had experienced. Once my story was written, I’d usually take it to the general store to be mailed out, but there were also postal boxes that were nailed up on trees at the different landings, and I could always stick a letter in one of them. One of the arriving steamboats carrying mail would pick it up and deliver it to whomever was taking the mail on the next leg of the route. I sent my stories to various newspapers, including the larger ones, like the New York Times, the Chicago Daily Journal, and the Jacksonville Times-Union, and the smaller ones, like the Marietta Journal in Georgia, and the newly formed West Hillsborough Times, a weekly newspaper in Dunedin, Florida. So far, I’d only been published once, and it was with the Marietta Journal. I couldn’t have been more pleased. I’d written about one of the local boys who’d been savagely attacked by a gator while a whole steamboat full of visiting northerners looked on in horror.
It had happened on a return trip from Palatka, just the year before. We were pretty close to home when the attack happened, and it was all on account of another snag. It wasn’t a branch that caught the paddlewheel this time, however, but a piece of a roof that had blown off during one of the tremendous summer storms that were a regular occurrence.
The Ashland was a brand-new boat, owned by the well-respected Hart Line, and it was her maiden voyage. Ivy and I had gone up to Palatka in the hopes of selling a bunch of jars of her honey and several of my quilt throws so we’d have enough money to buy a pretty wall mirror from the Sears catalog as a birthday present for Mama. She’d been admiring it and because she was never one to want much for herself, we were determined to get her that mirror. We’d succeeded in earning the money and had promptly gone into Palatka’s large general store and order
ed the item, which Papa would pick up once it came in so it could be hidden away until Mama’s birthday.
Ivy and I were in great spirits, having accomplished what we’d set out to do, and we were standing out on the promenade deck, enjoying the breeze and watching some sandhill cranes poking around for small fish at the river’s edge when the Ashland hit the snag. Anyone not holding on to something was tossed about as we came to a dead stop. Immediately, the boat’s captain ordered his deckhand to jump on in and try to free up the paddlewheel. The young man was Gene Pinder, and from what I was told afterward, both he and the captain were seasoned boatmen, but it was only the second time the two had run the Ocklawaha. No sooner had Gene’s splash smoothed out on the water’s surface then a louder splash was heard, and though we couldn’t see through the white foam, we knew there was something down there with him.
Suddenly, I spotted a line of bubbles making their way to the surface and a beeline straight for Gene, who was already removing the paddlewheel’s snag. People started hollering for the man to get out of the water, but he didn’t have time. With a violent tug, the deckhand was pulled completely underwater, and, within seconds, a bright red plume rose up, mixing with the dark green of the water. “Gator’s got him,” the steward yelled out. He pronounced it like a typical native Floridian, so that it sounded like “gay-tuh.” But northerners and southerners alike knew exactly what he meant. The captain, who had seen the gator from the house, quickly grabbed his rifle. It only took him one shot to make the gator set Gene free, but when several of the men reached over to pull the man back on board, only one leg came up with him while the alligator swam off with the other.
Fortunately, we were close to the dock at Silver Springs, and Mayoma Hailey was there. Unfortunately, though, the man had lost an enormous amount of blood, and even though Mayoma worked on him for an hour, there was just no saving him. Finally, after whispering, “Mama!” to his long-dead mother, Gene Pinder closed his eyes on this world and moved on to serve a higher and mightier captain for all of eternity.